


The Exor-schist

by citrusella



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: (well sort of... more like a reference to The Exorcist), Corrupted Gems, Crack, Exorcisms, Gen, Haircuts, Halloween, Horror Comedy, Hospitals, Possession, so that should tell you the amount of seriousness you should walk into it with, the phrase "the power of gneiss compels you" makes an appearance in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:07:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27274657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citrusella/pseuds/citrusella
Summary: Prompt: A series of events have led to a terrifying effect on one or more of the series’ characters. [Randomly roll from list: Mr. and Dr. Maheswaran] are now suffering from [Randomly roll from list: Spiritual Possession]. How did this happen?"This corrupted gem, it has a powerful connection to organic matter. Ones this powerful have been known to overtake and even kill humans."For the Cluster Spooky Writing Challenge!
Relationships: Connie Maheswaran & Steven Universe, Greg Universe & Steven Universe
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8
Collections: The Cluster Writers' Fic Collection, lofi fanfics to practice social distancing to





	The Exor-schist

**Author's Note:**

> I watched The Exorcist as research for this

Steven adjusted his phone on the Dondai's dashboard. He really needed to get a new stand for it—then he could videochat while driving! Surely, that wouldn't lead to any dangerous outcomes with his flawless driving record!

"So you're thinking about a haircut?" Connie's smiling face shone through the screen, though she seemed… distracted. And confused, a brow raised, as she appeared not to know what had caused Steven's sudden change of heart. Or… hair?

"Yeah, it's… Dad used to cut it himself—a couple times, he scheduled appointments with an _actual_ barber—but the point is this is my first time having to do it? I've kinda let it go for a bit long. Um. I wanna cut it because it's starting to remind me of, um, Mom." He frowned. It barely grazed his shoulders, but something about it, maybe the way it fell or the way the curls played against each other, felt too Rose, maybe even too Pink, for Steven's liking.

Connie looked down, trying to figure out how to raise her best friend's spirits, but Steven added an addendum that made it pretty easy. "So… um… yeah. I was thinking of changing it up, maybe, even. Y'know, new… um… year, new me?"

"Steven, it's October," Connie deadpanned. Steven shrugged and stuck his tongue out. "But, er, what kinds of hairstyles did you have in mind?"

"Oh, um, I hadn't… maybe… how do you think I'd look with a buzz cut?"

"Not unless you're willing to do the 'Connie, I'm bald' routine again. Every time we see each other!"

Steven giggled. "Okay, maybe not. Um… mohawk?"

Connie squinted. "…Are you ready for that far of a departure from your look?"

"Maybe I can only shave one side, then? Sorta ease into it?" He tried to imagine himself with that kind of hair.

Connie put her hand to her chin. "Mmm… not sure you can pull off a side shave…"

"Oh, wow, I'm hurt!" He played at offense and then put his thumb to his chin. "…Undercut?"

Connie's head craned to look back toward her door, her voice suddenly becoming serious, quiet, restrained. If Steven didn't know better, he'd have called her afraid.

"Steven, I have to go."

"Fine, I won't do an under—"

"I'm serious, I—" There was some thumping somewhere off-camera and Connie turned to look as someone with a voice he didn't recognize spoke. "No, um, Mom, it's fine, it's—"

Mom?! That didn't sound anything like Dr. Maheswaran.

A sudden scream played through his phone's speakers and the call cut out.

"Connie? Connie?!"

Oh, geez, why hadn't he paid attention when Pearl had tried to give him information on the nearest warp pad locations?!

Luckily, he was observant enough after a few minutes to realize he was near a few canyon attractions, just the right shade of rock to match the Beta Kindergarten…

If someone yelled "zoo wee mama, that kid's got a death wish" when he found the right one and jumped/floated over the edge, Steven pretended not to hear them.

* * *

Steven _might_ have frightened his dad, showing up via warp in the early evening twilight and bursting through his old bedroom door like he owned the place.

"Steven?!"

"No time! Something's wrong with Connie. Or her mom or something. She screamed on the video call and I gotta go help!"

"…Wouldn't it be smarter to just call the authorities?"

"A. If Connie's side of town is anything like ours: What authorities?" Dad nodded. "B. It… didn't really sound like an authorities-needing kind of issue? If it didn't sound completely off-the-wall, I'd say it was a gem thing."

Dad calmly replied, "…Okay, I'm coming with you."

"What?!"

"You're not getting yourself in trouble without adult supervision."

"Dad, I'm 17," Steven groaned.

"Which is still a minor. Your old man's coming whether you like it or not, Schtu-ball." He gave his son a gentle noogie.

"Okay. Plus, I guess it'll be faster if we take the van than if I walked there…"

Greg eyed his son. "…You were planning on walking?"

"Running, actually, but that's only faster if I'm… really stressed? And I mean, I am, Connie could be in danger, but—"

"But you're not turning pink," he finished.

"Nope. That's supposed to be a good thing, but… maybe we should just get prepared and get to the van?"

"You got it, bud."

* * *

Steven and Greg burst through Connie's door, shield and golf club in hand, respectively… only to find Connie had managed to corral her parents into a corner all on her own, apparently through sheer sword prowess and willpower.

"Huh, I would've thought you'd've brought in the cavalry ten minutes ago," she said nonchalantly. "I thought when they started acting weird yesterday that they might just be under the weather, but that's clearly not what's happening here." She kept her wide defensive stance, eyes on her parents at all times, her brow furrowed.

"Maybe this is a good old Hollywood spiritual possession deal?" Greg floated.

Steven and Connie looked to him in disbelief. "Dad, that doesn't make any sense."

"Yeah, Mr. Universe, normally I wouldn't discount even the weird things… but we don't have any haunted artifacts or anything. And none of us play with Luigi boards." Mr. Maheswaran lunged at her. She hissed. He backed off.

Greg blinked a few times and thought about correcting her pronunciation of "Ouija" but didn't. "Well, if you think it's not possession and Steven thinks it's not a gem thing—"

Steven put his hand in front of his dad. "Wait, what if this _is_ a gem thing?"

Connie cocked a brow. "What makes you so sure? Wait, it isn't you, is it?"

Steven waved the suggestion it could be his fault away with great speed. "No, no. Corrupted Topazes can possess things, though they normally need contact with it—one time me and Lars and Sadie and Ronaldo came across one in the lighthouse back when I was 12," he said, to an emphatic "WHAT" from Greg, "—but one time the gems and I came across a really powerful one that was doing it remotely in a town near the Prime Kindergarten."

* * *

"Steven, you'll need to stay back." Pearl's knowing but condescending voice issued the instruction to a 13-year-old Steven.

"Aw, what?" he exclaimed, disappointed.

"This corrupted gem, it has a powerful connection to organic matter. Ones this powerful have been known to overtake and even kill humans."

Steven's eyes bugged out of his head and his voice cracked into a squeak. "Kill?!"

"We don't know how your organic half will react, so you'll need to stay out of its range."

"…Yeah. Yeah, okay." He backed up. Not dying today, no sir.

* * *

He frowned. "It was possessing a few animals and everything." …He wondered if experiences like those influenced his decision to become a vegetarian.

"So, how did they get it to stop?" Connie asked.

"Well—"

* * *

"THE POWER OF GNEISS COMPELS YOU! THE POWER OF GNEISS COMPELS YOU! THE POWER OF GNEISS COMPELS YOU! THE POWER OF GNEISS COMPELS YOU!" the three screamed in unison at Dr. and Mr. Maheswaran, who had somehow gained the ability to float. Every few seconds, Steven sprayed at them from a bottle filled with his tears and spit. They didn't like that very much.

"Steven, are you sure this will work?" Connie broke away from the chanting.

"Well, it worked with the animals. Or else I guess the gem could've just gotten tired of possessing them." He glanced to his dad and hoped he wouldn't falter on the chant, as he was now the only one doing it.

Connie's whole face pursed practically into a knot. "Okay, but how will we defeat the gem without it taking us over?"

Steven looked as if he'd just been surprised with the world's worst pop quiz. "…Shoot. We don't even know where it's at! And we could take so long looking for it that your parents might die!"

The pop quiz landed on Connie's figurative desk, and she was somehow even less prepared for its reality than Steven. "What?! No, we'll find it faster than _that_!"

"It doesn't take very long, Connie!" he said in a panicked fervor.

"It doesn't _what!?_ " she shouted in disbelief.

"I'm sorry! I saw it happen when I went with Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl back then. I didn't want it to happen, not again!" His tone sounded somewhere between someone shouting "I'm not going back to jail" and Pearl at the galaxy warp the first time they'd seen Peridot. His eyes widened in a way that could only be described as unhinged. "Wait… _wait_! I… There's a way I can save your parents! I'll just… make it take me instead. Yeah. Yeah!"

"What!?" Neither Connie nor Greg was chanting anymore. The not-Maheswarans took that as an opportunity to approach the group.

Steven, ignoring the both of them and their emphatic clamors that he couldn't just _do_ that, ran toward Connie's parents and shouted, at first meekly, "I know you're just working off your instincts, how you think you should act, but you could really hurt people!" Growing more confident, he yelled, hoping the gem that had overtaken them could hear him, "You could go into me instead! I'd let you! Just stop hurting them!"

When, for several seconds, nothing seemed to happen, Steven's voice grew incensed, offended. "Take me, dang it! Take me! Take _me_!" He gave a growling scream and that seemed to get the possessor's attention.

The last thing Steven felt was raw power and anger flowing into him.

* * *

Steven blinked his eyes open to what was clearly a room in the hospital Connie's mom worked in. _Urgh_ , he had a splitting headache…

"That was a really boneheaded move, you know that?" Connie said, above him. She was the only one in the room. Pearl was pacing outside the door, he could see through its small window.

"C-Connie? Where… where's Dad? Are your parents—"

"Your dad's here; he just went to go get something from a vending machine. And they're fine. You did kind of get the gem out of them, but… that was so… you could've died!"

"H-How did you get it out of _me_ , then?"

"I forced my parents to yell that 'power of gneiss compels you' thing at you with your dad and spray you with your own spit. They thought I was crazy; they didn't remember a thing."

"But they still did it?"

"I got them to do it long enough that I could call Pearl, anyway. She brought Garnet and Amethyst and she and Amethyst started yelling so my parents didn't have to do it. Garnet looked around and found the gem, sent it to the temple and all that. Turns out it was in a bag of evidence my dad hadn't taken to the station yet."

"So everyone's okay, then." At her nod, he sighed, relieved. "…Wait, why am I in the hospital? Did it try to kill me?"

"No, I think your gem half fought it? You writhed around a little and got _really_ pink, you must have been super stressed out deep inside, I guess, but that was about it. You're mostly getting looked at for some sort of heart rhythm thing my mom thought she picked up while you were pink—it's probably nothing, even she thinks so—and treated for dehydration from all that spitting… though the gem did try to make you jump out of my window, so you're also on a psych hold for most of the next three days, courtesy of my mom." She winced, hoping he wouldn't take that piece of news _too_ badly.

"…Oh, geez," he pouted with a sigh. "—Wait, I have a therapy appointment tomorrow. How am I going to explain—wait, where's my phone—"

"Your dad said something about when your appointments happened when my mom took it—it's a psych hold precaution thing—" she made a pointless circular gesture with her right hand as she explained right as Steven had opened his mouth to ask, "—and she said she'd let your therapist know—it's still the same one that works here, right?" Steven nodded; he'd considered the idea of switching therapists once he found a place to settle down more permanently, but he figured why mess with a good thing until then, he was doing quite fine with Dr. Brooks at the moment.

Or, at least, he _hoped_ he still would be, after she found out about _this_ little venture…

"Maybe she can visit you here? Maybe she'll even lift the psych hold, if you explain what happened… then again, as far as I know, psychology at large considers 'I was possessed' a delusional kinda deal, so maybe…"

"Oh, I've gotten her to believe more messed-up stuff related to my gem."

Connie chuckled. "Well, then, here's hoping you can do it again."

He hummed thoughtfully. "…Did the gems ever explain how the chanting works, exactly? I always meant to ask, but you know me and asking follow-up questions. I never got around to it."

"Yeah, I asked Pearl while Garnet and Amethyst were hoping they could use your spray bottle with the diamond essences to heal the Topaz—it worked, by the way, and she's really sorry, but also she thinks she possessed Pink Diamond—" Steven winced, "Pearl said they could really say and do anything since it's really about annoying her into stopping the possession more than anything else, but Amethyst insists on that kind of stuff ever since she saw, and I quote, 'some sort of horror movie from the '70s'."

"You mean?" He bit his lip and pulled at a curl.

"Yup, we were just re-enacting parts of _The Exorcist_ ," she said to his epic, embarrassed facepalm.

"You didn't even have to do the 'take me' bit, but you did anyway, you… _boneheaded_ … goof," she continued with a snort.

He flopped his head back onto the pillow, feeling like he had gone scare-or-sweeting and gotten a rock instead of candy. "…Do you just wanna talk about haircuts again?"

"Honestly, and maybe this is unhealthy, but I think the faster we put today behind us, the better." She blew a light raspberry loosely through her lips. "So I'd love to."

**Author's Note:**

> Some parts of this felt a little awkward but honestly I'm glad I got it to where I was satisfied so quick! Plenty of time to finish that President Kisses Babies chapter!


End file.
